More Final Cut Pro X fallout: top reality producer ditches Apple for Avid

Following the controversial launch of Apple's completely revamped video editing software, Final Cut Pro X, Avid Media has announced (hat tip to MacRumors) that award-winning TV production company Bunim/Murray is dropping Final Cut Pro in favor of a complete Avid makeover. Going forward, the company will use Avid Media Composer and Avid Symphony for editing along with an Avid ISIS 5000 networked storage system to replace its current Final Cut Pro workflow.

"Due to the large volume of media generated by our reality shows, we needed to re-evaluate our editing and storage solutions. At the same time, we were looking for a partner who would understand our long-term needs," Bunim/Murray's SVP of post production Mark Raudonis said in a statement.

The message between the lines is that Apple's latest offerings simply won't (ahem) cut it anymore. Earlier this year, Apple completely re-architected Final Cut Pro X from the ground up with a new, modern media handling framework as well as 64-bit support. In doing so, however, it dropped many features that editing pros had come to rely on in their workflows. Apple also dropped its Final Cut Server product after phasing out its Xserve and Xserve RAID storage products over the past few years.

Apple stopped caring about the pro market when iphone became more profitable than their pro graphics business. It just took a few years to notice due to product release cycles.

I've thought that for a while... Apple is quickly moving in to the consumer electronics space and basically forgetting about the market that literally kept that company alive during the dark years. Now Apple is basically a portable device manufacturer. Every device they sell is aimed straight at portable users; even the Mac Mini's prime selling point is that it's so small you can take it with you.

IDGIApple completely rewrites the massive application, from scratch, to ditch any hint of legacy from the old crusty app because it was technically not going to survive in the long run. It was impossible in FC9 to do any multithreading, couldn't take advantage of more than 2gb of memory at a time, was still written in Carbon, the UI was non-standard and slow, the rendering was hellaciously slow. The limitations were so great that you had to do some weird shit to do multicore rendering like setting up a local render farm and have multiple instances of the FCP renderer attach to a local render farm and fuck it was crusty as hell. I mean FFS the codebase goes back to when Macromedia developed FCP running on OS9 in 1998.

If Apple didn't care about the customers of the application, they would just have let it die off slowly instead of spending several years rewriting the entire massive thing in 64 bit with thread concurrency the #1 goal so that it could continue to go for the next decade or more. With FCPX, you never even really have to render anymore, it's such a well designed multithreaded app that it uses any available cores to do rendering in the background while you work.

So I really don't understand the logic of 'Apple doesn't care'. Though I'm not expecting an answer from the normal forum trolls, either.

I stopped caring about Apple products in the pro industry when the discontinued Shake. I spent $10,000 on the PowerMac Quad G5 to get a nice suite of tools like Final Cut Studio and Shake, only to end up having Shake discontinued, the PowerPC architecture thrown out the window, and now FCP X butchering all that Final Cut Pro should be. My only worth while upgrade path at this point is going with a new highend PC. Such is life. I guess the scrillions of dollars Apple is making with mobile devices has kind of blinded themselves a bit to the professional market.

Did Final Cut Pro stopped working when Final Cut Pro X was released by Apple?

Not being facetious. I genuinely want to know whether there was some new technology or process or something, that somehow made Final Cut Pro obsolete and forced studios to switch to Final Cut X?

Well, of course it did not stop working, but the thinking is that if there won't be an upgrade (FCPX not being considered an upgrade) you don't exactly want to base your business on a product where there are no real updates anymore (FCP) or a product that doesn't suit your needs (FCPX).

Did Final Cut Pro stopped working when Final Cut Pro X was released by Apple?

Not being facetious. I genuinely want to know whether there was some new technology or process or something, that somehow made Final Cut Pro obsolete and forced studios to switch to Final Cut X?

FCP continued working as expected, but Apple stupidly pulled that product from purchase so any studio that wanted to buy additional licenses (such as for hiring more editors) was screwed. They since reversed that position (kinda) after the uproar, but not before alienating a lot of long-time customers.

FCPX is certainly an advancement for the long run, but it's still missing features from the previous version. The biggest mistake that Apple made was botching the transition for existing customers.

Did Final Cut Pro stopped working when Final Cut Pro X was released by Apple?

Not being facetious. I genuinely want to know whether there was some new technology or process or something, that somehow made Final Cut Pro obsolete and forced studios to switch to Final Cut X?

There are plenty of features that are meaningless for the average user (or even the power user/prosumer), but are extremely important for professional studios that were dropped from FCPX. It's not just about the random indie film makers, but about the broadcast-grade pros with top-end equipment based around Apple hardware who were left in the lurch with FCPX.

Wow. That really makes me sad. I haven't used the new FCP, but Apple has really screwed up. At one point, I really thought FCP really had a chance to be a contender against Avid...

It took a long time, but at least so far as my experience in New York goes, FCP was effectively replacing Avid pretty much everywhere. It'll be interesting to see if this reverses that trend. But my guess is that studios will just stick with FCP until Apple releases enough updates to Final Cut X to make it professionally usable.

Our production company still uses FCP7, but at some point we'll have to either switch to Premiere or Avid. Right now the likelier contender will be Premiere in CS6, assuming they've gotten playback worked out correctly. We used to be Avid and have no desire to go back.

My opinion is that Apple dropped the ball by making the product so completely different from FCP7. An upgraded GUI, 64 bit, and moving all the bells and whistles in FCP7 into FCP8 would have prevented this mass exodus. Now we have a new product that doesn't work as needed and an old product that's being outpaced by 64bit offerings from Adobe and Avid.

FCPX has some really interesting elements to it, but nothing so useful as to eliminate the need for tape deck interaction, etc.

IDGISo I really don't understand the logic of 'Apple doesn't care'. Though I'm not expecting an answer from the normal forum trolls, either.

Is it backwards compatible?

No, it is not.

Do users with years of customer files created in the previous versions have to keep systems around running that previous version of FCP? Yes, they do.

Were Microsoft to release a new version of Office that was incapable of loading files from a previous version of Office, there would be a similar user revolt. Microsoft clearly cares about their Office customers.

Just as clearly, Apple no longer seems to care about their professional customers. If Apple truly cared, they wouldn't have released a half finished product with fatally flawed backwards compatibility.

I'm a professional independent filmmaker and I've been using FCP for over 10 years now. I got FCP X, but sadly, I can't use it for my work. Without mentioning the fact that old projects are incompatible, I can cope with the UI changes, but there are so many features missing that my workflow is obsolete (is there really no way to save a custom effect or transition as a favourite anymore?)... but I could learn the new ways...

Except for that bloody magnetic timeline. It looks great on paper, and the few examples they show are fantastic... but in the real world, it's bloody unusable. I may be a messy editor (using multiple layers, lots of gaps as I organise my scene, etc) but I can't work that way in FCPX. There's no room for experimentation or shoving clips at the end of the timeline to use them later on. It has to be neat and tidy. So if you're a neat and tidy editor, welcome to the future. As for me, I'll keep track of the latest updates to FCP X (where's the promised multicam editing btw?) but work in FCP 7 for as long as I can cope with.

Shame though: I love the keywording and organisational tools and being able to work with so many formats natively.

I agree with Rory_O: Apple have spent tons of money updating FCP, so they're obviously serious about this field... it just seems as if they talked to the wrong editors when determining what to keep and what to drop...

Did Final Cut Pro stopped working when Final Cut Pro X was released by Apple?

Not being facetious. I genuinely want to know whether there was some new technology or process or something, that somehow made Final Cut Pro obsolete and forced studios to switch to Final Cut X?

While a fully-updated FC7.0.3 works under Lion, there's no guarantee that FC7 will be compatible with the next version of OSX, and in fact it's more than likely that it won't if Apple is no longer updating it. Versions prior to 7.0.3 are not listed as compatible with Lion. This means that any studio planning a year or two ahead has to take into account the fact that they might not be able to buy new hardware to run the project that they're working on.

So the answer is yes, FC7 is obsolete and anyone using it will probably run into problems down the line.

IDGIApple completely rewrites the massive application, from scratch, to ditch any hint of legacy from the old crusty app because it was technically not going to survive in the long run. It was impossible in FC9 to do any multithreading, couldn't take advantage of more than 2gb of memory at a time, was still written in Carbon, the UI was non-standard and slow, the rendering was hellaciously slow. The limitations were so great that you had to do some weird shit to do multicore rendering like setting up a local render farm and have multiple instances of the FCP renderer attach to a local render farm and fuck it was crusty as hell. I mean FFS the codebase goes back to when Macromedia developed FCP running on OS9 in 1998.

It is possible to update any software piece-by-piece. It's not always the easiest, most cost-effective, or ideologically pure option (strictly speaking from a design/development point of view), but it's doable. Apple decided it wasn't worth it.

Its not just the rewrite missing features, its dumping final cut server and the hardware line. No one knows what apple is going to do next. Professional Apps need some sort of roadmap or proof of active improvement. Apple has long needed to cut away or spin off a few product lines. Servers and Mac Pros should almost be there own company allowed to develop what is needed for the Pro market. Final Cut Pro, Studio and Server should be its own company, without living on the whims of apple. FileMaker Pro was spun off years ago and even though its owned by apple it moves as it wants. Final Cut should also be its own company.

To be honest, I have to wonder why Apple is in this line of business. For a large company, if a project isn't worth a hundred million dollars, then it's probably better dropped and the resources used elsewhere.

FCP isn't important or even significant for Apple's survival. Apple really should sell FCP to a company whose survival will depend upon the FCP sales. At that point, FCP will get the updates it needs, with much more attentive serving of its much smaller market.

It's why I'm dubious about having my company depend on a product that isn't a core business of the vendor. I want their survival to be contingent on serving my customer niche properly.

I was at a Apple euro presentation of FCPX when it came out, and the resellers there had these things to say to Apple:1: Simply dumping the Server hardware like that, left most customers with NO faith in Apple.They don't care if it's a [small] business for Apple, without it, no installations.Apple Reply: Use Mac minis... (!) We were laughing for 15 min after this..

2: The FCPX product might be cool, but dropping the reselling of FCP7 like that, again, left customers with NO faith in Apple.Apple reply: We need to move forward..

It was very clear to me, that Apple thinks everything can 'just run on Mac minis'.. even your render farms. In theory, that might be right, WHEN a Thunderbolt adaptor comes out for connection to fiber channel systems, but then again, you don't use a Mac mini as a fileserver or FinalCutServer, or PodCast Producer master in any serious installation...

FCPX is left in the shadow in Denmark due to this now, with none being it for serious production setups...

To be honest, I have to wonder why Apple is in this line of business. For a large company, if a project isn't worth a hundred million dollars, then it's probably better dropped and the resources used elsewhere.

FCP isn't important or even significant for Apple's survival. Apple really should sell FCP to a company whose survival will depend upon the FCP sales. At that point, FCP will get the updates it needs, with much more attentive serving of its much smaller market.

It's why I'm dubious about having my company depend on a product that isn't a core business of the vendor. I want their survival to be contingent on serving my customer niche properly.

Tom, the shift to content creation is moving out of dedicated production facilities. FCPX resinated well with those who don't have dedicated staff who eat, breathe and live their production suites. I believe Apple wanted to target the future of content creation, which will no longer be the big studios, but small independent or even amateur outfits.

To be honest, I have to wonder why Apple is in this line of business. For a large company, if a project isn't worth a hundred million dollars, then it's probably better dropped and the resources used elsewhere.

Because when they entered that market, there was a huge potential. And Apple almost captured the complete Hollywood with FCP!

Hey, even the RED codec is based on QuickTime/Apple stuff, and for some time, FCP was the only RED editing software to use...

It was very clear to me, that Apple thinks everything can 'just run on Mac minis'.. even your render farms.

I seriously doubt that that is actually what they said – Mac OS X Server runs on Mac minis, yes, but for FCP much more relevantly it runs on Mac Pros.

Sounds a lot as if they mentioned both the Mac Pro and the Mac mini and some people just latched on to the Mac mini even being mentioned at all, completely forgetting about the Pro.

The current Pro model is apparently at the end of its run – if it should actually be discontinued, then you'd have reason to complain. If it's updated with an even faster Pro as usual, that is obviously your server machine for high-performance taks.

And I doubt that the Apple presenters failed to mention that readily apparent fact.

Did Final Cut Pro stopped working when Final Cut Pro X was released by Apple?

Not being facetious. I genuinely want to know whether there was some new technology or process or something, that somehow made Final Cut Pro obsolete and forced studios to switch to Final Cut X?

In addition to what has already been mentioned, IIRC, Final Cut Pro 7 (the previous version) is 32-bit, so you're limited in the amount of RAM you can address. This wasn't an issue back when it was released; it is now. FCP 7 is simply becoming obsolete, and FCP X is a prosumer product, that cannot open previous FCP 7 files because it works completely differently, has a completely different interface and workflow, and has a number of limitations based on how Apple thinks everyone should use their software product, as opposed to how the pros actually did/do use FCP7.

FTA"At the same time, we were looking for a partner who would understand our long-term needs,"

"Long-term" is the key phrase in everything mentioned. People are switching because Apple has shown they are unwilling to be the long-term partner that major production houses thought they were. Even if Apple changed this stance (unlikely), the damage has been done, and it is unlikely their former FCP customers will return. Then again, Apple has pretty much done this to the majority of enterprise-level products they have turned out in the past several years; it's clear that consumers are now their focus, and they don't care about the rest any more.

It was very clear to me, that Apple thinks everything can 'just run on Mac minis'.. even your render farms.

I seriously doubt that that is actually what they said – Mac OS X Server runs on Mac minis, yes, but for FCP much more relevantly it runs on Mac Pros.

Sounds a lot as if they mentioned both the Mac Pro and the Mac mini and some people just latched on to the Mac mini even being mentioned at all and completely forgetting about the Pro.

The current Pro model is apparently at the end of its run – if it should actually be discontinued, then you'd have reason to complain. If it's updated with an even faster Pro as usual, that is your server machine for high-performance taks.

And I doubt that the Apple presenters failed to mention that fact.

Ok, to be honest - they aid that all your servers can just run on Mac minis - and they actually said that FCPX runs much better on the current iMac..

I want to say that the BBC has moved over to Adobe Premier. well..at least Top Gear. I kinda agree with Apple's move. Capture the Prosumer market and then gradually add the features back in and make them hungry for the upgrades. yes, it alienates the professional, but from a business plan I think its a good plan.

Did Final Cut Pro stopped working when Final Cut Pro X was released by Apple?

Not being facetious. I genuinely want to know whether there was some new technology or process or something, that somehow made Final Cut Pro obsolete and forced studios to switch to Final Cut X?

Yes, because all standards are static forever.

In a moving business where you may have to process new media types and make sure your software will keep working on newer operating systems -- please remember Apple doesn't support installing old versions of OS X on new machines due to lacking driver support -- then you need to put your investment in a place where you have a future, and a plan.

It's a no-brainer that you can't pin your hopes forever on a piece of software that will not be supported, and may not even work on newer machines, or work with newer media types.

The current Pro model is apparently at the end of its run – if it should actually be discontinued, then you'd have reason to complain. If it's updated with an even faster Pro as usual, that is obviously your server machine for high-performance taks.

And I doubt that the Apple presenters failed to mention that readily apparent fact.

Because most of us really want those gigantic Mac Pros taking up a huge space in our server racks while simultaneously lacking redundant power supplies and many of the things that make a server a server.

Don't get me wrong, I get Apple's move. But trying to say the Mac Pro can take the place of what an XServe did really isn't true, any more than saying a Mac Mini can.

My editor buddies are evenly divided between FCP and Avid. None of them have made the move to FCP X yet; the Avid guys won't, but the FCP guys won't rule it out until it's time for them to upgrade, and none of them are there yet.

The interesting thing is that some of them have moved from Mac Pros to iMacs, without any detrimental effects. Who would have thought that something so mighty would have come from Apple's modest Bondi Blue all-in-one?

Because most of us really want those gigantic Mac Pros taking up a huge space in our server racks while simultaneously lacking redundant power supplies and many of the things that make a server a server.

Don't get me wrong, I get Apple's move. But trying to say the Mac Pro can take the place of what an XServe did really isn't true, any more than saying a Mac Mini can.

That's not what the post above was about; It was clearly about performance.

Redundant power supplies are a whole different issue again; And unless you have full redundancy across the entire system the value of that specific feature is limited as well.

If the software supports server pools with automatic, graceful failover, the individual failure-resistance of each server by itself gets much less relevant anyway. And with the architecture of FCPX it looks a lot as if that is where they're headed.

But my guess is that studios will just stick with FCP until Apple releases enough updates to Final Cut X to make it professionally usable.

I'm not so sure. (Note: I'm an outsider; I don't edit video, either professionally or as an amateur.) Studios may be happy to keep going with what they have while they wait and see what happens with FCX, but there will almost certainly come a point when they need to do something which FCP simply can't cope with. Maybe the clips are too long. Maybe the high resolution video they want to pull together needs more RAM than FCP can address. Whatever it is, FCP is now a dead end; they need to at least consider alternatives to make sure that the business can continue to operate.

In short: if Apple is serious about the professional editing market, they need to move, and move fast, to fill the gaps in FCX. Even if they can't fill all the gaps quickly, if they can at least show that they're working on it, and fill at least some of the bigger holes over the next, say, six months, it would instill some degree of confidence in the studios. But if they just beaver away quietly without saying boo, it'll lead to more people going elsewhere.

The ultimate question, though, is how much the studios' business is worth to Apple. That's not just the revenue and profit figures that the studios bring in by themselves, but also the "halo" effect - up and coming people were learning FCP in college because that was the de-facto standard in studios, leading to a snowball effect by the holdouts switching to FCP because that's what all the graduates know. If Apple thinks that that business isn't worth the cost of keeping up the features that are needed exclusively by the big studios, then they'll drop that business without a second thought - and the big studios will go elsewhere, because the product doesn't meet their needs.

My feeling is that Apple's no longer interested in the big end of town. There's more profit to be had by selling to a significantly larger audience of mid-level and small-time players. Which is rather sad; there's a lot of pull in being able to say "We produce the software that the big players use", and if Apple loses that, it might be an early sign of a decline in Apple's fortunes. Won't happen quickly; might be decades until it becomes obvious; and I certainly wouldn't short Apple just on that basis. Time will tell.

Any CEO that keeps Apple in the "Pro" game should be fired. This is not their strength. Somewhere in Cupertino there is (or should be) a whiteboard that has certain words written on it: "industrial design", "marketing", "ease of use", "consumer friendly", etc. If a product does not fall into all, or at least MOST of these, then it doesn't play to the areas where Apple is strongest and it would be wise for Apple to ignore that area. Pro video is based off performance. Apple makes beautiful machines, usually made of more expensive materials that would cost more anyway because they spend more time designing than other companies. This means that a machine with the same specs will usually cost at least a LITTLE more from Apple. It's a fantastic realization from Apple that these things they make aren't "just" machines. If they live in your house then they're also furniture. If they go outside with you, then they are also accessories. They need, for consumers, to be designed and marketed accordingly. Let others concentrate on the low margin, high end work horses. Apple is a mainstream computer company now. They'll keep doing prosumer, but that's where it stops.